Ships & Modules

Not angry at all, just having a nice discussion with people who differ in opinion.

First of all, like Vilnius said, i don't think anyone is angry here. We are argumenting, which is the point of a forum. A little prick here or there, or letting off some frustration is fine, as long as it doesn't get abusive.


You can already similarily shut down missiles the same way, using similar existing mechanics. Why should TD trample even more over, for example, Damps - yet another module that the nerfminded scream about on these very forums?

When it comes to accuracy, it doesn't shut down. It's only relevant in situations where it can push margin.

That, in itself, is a very interesting continued discussion which i doubt we have room to get into properly here. It's an interesting aspect of the demise of the HAC class (which rely on a low-margin tri-unity mitigation tank; sig-speed-resist), and the rise of high-margin alternatives.

Alternatives like the tier 3 BC. Let's go back to the example of the Talos again. It's a BC like the Drake using the shortest range weaponry on an oversized turret. Yet it can project the majority of it's damage up to around 60km, while mitigating a good 2-2.5k transversal. How much radial velocity do you think apply then? How "OP" is the HML's range? and if you want to retract this to a discussion about brawling you should consider that it's not balanced per weapon system, it's balanced per the amount of effects you can predict to encounter there.

If you don't want to use your mobility, for position or accuracy, to win fights (as per the Drake), there's no doubt you'll have a problem beating Drakes. They excel at sitting still and looking stupid, in vast numbers.



The crow-vaga example was meant to illustrate the point that while turret mechanics affect both agressor and defender in both ways, missile mechanics only affect one actor in one way. A missile ship can never apply his own mobility to increase his accuracy, so while he will reliably hit well enough under most scenarios - he will never hit well enough when it comes to pushing exception. The exception that make good groups good. The groups who understand and utilize the finer points of complexity in the game. The complexity the ongoin design trends streamline and cause more issues like the percieved issues with missiles to errupt.

Missiles (Drakes et. al.) are streamlined, and scale well with numbers.



I moved this part down since it is pretty much the crunchpoint, and it relates back to the other two replies. I don't really care too much about missiles - i care about the misconception that they are too powerful, that something glaringly needs to be done about it, and that any haphazard band-aid is acceptable.

I hate Drake-blobs as much as you do - but the difference between me and you is that i have realized the problem is not the Drake (HML, or anything tied to the missile accuracy mechanics).

My main concern as illustrated over and over is that this will just continue to trample over other balance (most notably, numbers which is the real cause for the majority of missile concerns). It's not missiles, it's missiles in high numbers.

It's because of Falcon and tier 3 BC all over again (which did little to balance Falcon or Drake, but did plenty to ruin Cerb and Deimos, among other things - making the game poorer rather than richer). It will not deal with the sweeping issue (Drakeblobs, HML-spam etc.), but it will ruin application of existing balance, ships and mods in other areas (or scales) of the game, where the issues don't manifest themselves because the counters are effective and balance upheld.

It's a continuation of broad sweeping solutions from a large-fleet perspective, which is an incredibly poor position to start from as large scale battles necessarily tone down various layers of complexity.

For good reason: If you solo with a BS, it's likely not a PL fleet MWD-less, full-tank rail-Rokh.

The proposed TD changes is a perfect example of that, it will not be effective on the large scale gameplay where missiles are popular. It won't nerf a Drakeblob, which i can only assume is it's expressed motive. It will make it better, by enabling the blob and streamlining more mechanics.

If you want it put crass - many recent proposed changes to HML-spam 'imbalance' will only make it worse.

What happens when 50 Drakes begin to TD 10 Tengus? The Drake is a pretty decent non-bonus EW platform after all.

It's yet another reason not to fight unless you have equal or better numbers. Let ship spinning, WoT and LOL commence!

Less emergence, less content - more AFK in EVE.

There's also no way to increase missile effectiveness by just slapping on a few low or med slot modules.

Oh, yeah, and defender missiles. Maybe fix these instead of making TDs the catch-all counter against enemy damage application (except smart bombs).

You mean apart from the fact that the Turret ships can still hit them effectively unless they sit in the Drakes' optimal?

You missed part of the argument, and you're still being as defiant as ever, assuming (for some reason) like newer players tend to do that the game is balanced on some sort of versus-grounds.

Using damps is either or not just as applicable and 'here' as TD. You inferred another factor: range, in contrast to accuracy. A damp can deal with range just as well as a TD was my reply. Why would you bring a TD to deal with Rail Nagas? A damp would be more effective, since they couldn't just overextend ammo and stay at range. Since there is no versus-grounds, it's also quite well balanced now, in how the TD have the option to both deal with range and accuracy on turrets, while a damp have the option to deal with the range of all ships (and locktime). If balance is your motive, why trample balance where it exist?

So what would happen to the Talos under some TD from a Drake? Well, an MWD'ing Drake have the sig of a capital. XL guns can hit a Drake. So in order to deal with a Talos firing L, you'd need to TD it below an XL turret and then some.

Let me intercept you and continue: What if the Drake has an AB then? Then i'd like to congratulate you upon finding a way to deal with HML. After all, simply slapping an AB on tend to mitigate a large portion of missile DPS. We're talking about above 50% figures. Ever see two 100mn Tengus killing each other? No? There's a reason, they mitigate 90% dps.

They can stack full webs on each other and they will still mitigate some damage, because they still move.

They don't toward turrets though. They can be as small and fast as they like, but if they're not faster than the turret ship, all they are to the turrets, is small. Their relative position don't change.

This is also my reservation with you. I care about underdogs and variety like Gallente, HACs, smaller gangs, drones and damps. You seem all too eager to trample all over them to have an easier time with Drakes or Tengus.

All of which, once again, will just serve to make the typical 'Drake' better in the larger scheme of things.

All proposed changes from TD to Drakes themselves are buffs, specificly for Drakeblobs (ie., more Drakes).

It may end up nerfing undermanned Drakes, as if they were ever a problem when you have more ships ...

You trying to play the "I'm older in this game" card is hilarious, mostly because there's a good chance you're wrong and it doesn't matter anyway. It won't help you in this discussion and just makes you look dumb so perhaps you should try and stick to real arguments, if you have any.

A Damp only works for range really and is mostly useless if the fight end up short range. A TD can also work within that range due to tracking script so yeah you're wrong there and I'm kinda amazed for someone who claims to be so knowledgeable to not notice the difference. Your "lets facehug a talos with a drake and see how tracking scripts on a TD don't help much" is quite funny, especially how you try to explain the AB bit, it's endearing. Because every target is a drake with a sig radius of the moon and you always go against targets in short-medium range that are faster than you. Nice pick on the drake vs talos, sadly I see through it.

Your "see, tengus and missiles suck" is also quite funny as it's one of the best solo PVP ship for a reason, not every target is a 100mn AB cruiser and because of that (amazingly) they work great so you're wrong there as well. Missiles do less damage to moving targets, wooptidoo want a cookie? Turrets do less damage to targets at range and with higher angular, potato potato.

Missiles have no specific ewar against them, turrets do. There's also other ewar types that work against both so they don't count. Still remains the fact that there's no valid ewar against missiles, thus that needs to be fixed. End of story really.

Do try to use real arguments in your next post, would make things so much easier.

It's hard pleasing some people .

Did my fancy words anger you so much that you missed the cited example at the top of the post?

If you don't want me to answer your direct questions and rather backpedal around the topic, please let me know beforehand so i don't waste my time trying to answer the questions you ask me or reply to the examples you draw up yourself.

Now that you've spent the majority of your post talking about my character, language and demeanor and then tracked back to square one with a blanket statement - do you have something to add, or would you like to do this dance again?

Missiles need no TD against them because:
- Positive transversal (relativity).
- Positive modules (enhancer, computer).
- Existing EWar (damps etc.).
- Existing additional modules (AB, SB etc.).
- Different accuracy equation (subtractive vs. chance-based).

by extension,

- The understanding that letting TD affect Missiles will not solve the percieved issues, yet throw unintended balance.
- The destructive design of changing things without understanding mechanics, causality or scaled impact.
- The fact that our designers have a very negative track record with these things over the past few expansions.

If you dislike being compared to beginning players who make threads about "ship vs. ship" stop making similar comparisons "module vs. module".

I still maintain that the only reason you are so adamant about this stupid change is that you don't know how to deal with HML and that frustrate you so much that you don't care about any other modules, ships or races being hurt in the process. Then you project the idea that i would somehow be selfish in this thread.

Are the words in the list difficult? I can explain them to you again.

1. The ability to affect your own accuracy through movement makes no difference?

2. I think you missed the point, adding such modules is stupid because of how the equations differ (5). I used it in my initial post as sarcasm, go back and read it again. We don't want blap-Ravens killing frigates with reliable application of damage, that's stupid. Missile accuracy modules is a bad idea. The fact that they don't exist is good, yet not irrelevant. Having both TD and enhancers affect missiles will make them more powerful than they are now, and break other balance.

3. This is your "versus perspective". You seem to be under the impression that you can simply compare things and cancel them out. It's akin to a new player thinking a more seasoned player have better options simply because he has more options. Ability to choose and adapt is definately good, but it doesn't create scenarios where things cancel each other out. If you can only fly scissors your scissors do not become useless or worse than mine, simply because i can fly paper and scissors. Scissors still only have issues with rock.

4. You apply the same logic again. Comparing blanketly, assuming they cancel out each other while you have previously written off other important factors (such as transversal) as irrelevant. That the AB affect the missiles much more because they don't have transversal, accuracy modifiers or can not instantly evaporate you, that is something you happily ignore.

5. Once again, the same logic. It's "different" but you don't seem to understand how that will provide different results. Instead you write it off as similar results. The tactical advantage of being able to predict one but not the other, is probably also something you consider making no difference. Why is alpha powerful when two ships do the same dps? That's why.

1 yup that can (depending on scenario) but if you meant that you should have said that, You didn't. In you eagerness to use big words you forgot to convey your actual point because "Positive transversal" means nothing, what you meant was the ability to influence tracking and in that regard, without any more explanation, the most logical point is about TE/TC positively affecting turret performance which makes no difference if you give missiles that same option, as I stated earlier. Being able through navigation to affect tracking can't be construed from what you wrote, unless you know what you meant beforehand which kinda defeats the whole thing of trying to get your point across

2 Giving missiles a small percentage better expl. radius like 5% for TE and 15% for scripted TC (numbers open to discussion ofcourse) is not going to make a huge difference but it does help while giving missiles more range in the process which is what unguided missiles desperately need. Just because TC gets scripted tracking of 30% doesn't mean the missile variant should get the exact same numbers, balance and all that and if a Raven wants to use all his tank/tackle slots for that new mod then so be it, then they might actually get used in pvp some time. (killing frigates is ofcourse an amazing role for a BS and there's no other BS that can do that either)

3 they do cancel out, if something affects both "sides" (turrets and missiles) you can't use that as a reason why missiles specifically have issues with them, because it affects turrets users in the exact same way. Not sure why this is difficult to understand tbh

4 have a scrammed drake shoot an AB frigate that orbits him at 500m, now have a scrammed turret BC shoot that same frigate at that same 500m orbit. Tell me how the Drake has it more difficult than the turret BC. Two different mechanics, two different pros and cons but in the end there's really not that much difference in effectiveness. Just because they're not the same doesn't mean it's not on par

5 just because there's damage variance because of randomness it CAN work in your favour and it can also work AGAINST you, overall it evens out and makes no difference in the grand scheme of things because, as stated earlier, it's about averages. And if you really want to bring that 1% wrecking chance into the discussion then all I can say is "lol". Bringing up the difference between alpha and dps is hilarious if you're trying to convince people that hit quality variance is a actually a deciding factor. While it CAN be it also can NOT be which cancels each other out. Again, not that difficult to understand


:)

Since the nano nerf, missile will almost alwayus do 100% damage unless its an MWD frigate (and even then a FAST one).

Missiles need a nerf... or at least a counter.

Heavily missile do full damage against frigs up to about 900 m/s

Do 900 m/s in a tight orbit around a turret cruiser and suddenly things seem a bit less balanced...

Plus they have 50-70km range...